


pyrrhic

by therestlessbrook



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-07 21:26:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18240383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therestlessbrook/pseuds/therestlessbrook
Summary: Pyrrhic (adjective) - to be won at too great a cost.Or Karen and the realities of working as a journalist.





	pyrrhic

Here is the part Karen dislikes most about her job: most newspapers have comment sections.

She doesn’t read the comments, of course. She learned that on her third week on the job, after downing a few shots of espresso and a talk with Ellison. He is firmly in the ‘don’t read; don’t look; pretend we don’t have those’ camp. He lets Mark in PR deal with the comments—deleting the most offensive ones and sorting out the rest.

Even so, readers still manage to convey their opinions to reporters.

Karen has a file in her desk that is solely dedicated to angry readers. She keeps the notes in her office—until the building undergoes plumbing maintenance and Ellison orders everyone to work from home for a week. Karen grabs most of her files without looking at them and leaves them on her dining room table. The folders slump over onto their sides, and she sees a few of the letters slip free.

She doesn’t pay them any attention. Not when she has takeout and Frank and a glass of Chardonnay calling her name. She sits on the couch with him and they pass the evening quietly—her feet tucked into his lap when they watch some old black and white film, her eyelids heavy with sleep and food. She falls asleep halfway through the movie, and wakes in her bed, Frank curled around her.

The next morning, he rises before her—which is pretty normal. She showers, pulls on a robe, and walks into the kitchen to find Frank at the table. His cup of coffee looks as though it has gone cold.

Frank has the notes spread out before him on the table. One is creased between thumb and forefinger, the edge of his nail tearing a hole through it.

“What is this?” he says, and his voice has the rumble of an oncoming storm.

The sad truth of the matter is, Karen has grown so used to the notes that they don’t even mean anything to her anymore. She keeps them on hand in case the cops need them; it’s what they searched after Lewis Wilson sent his manifesto to her, and how she knew he’d never contacted her before.

“This,” says Karen, picking up an empty mug and filling it with with fresh coffee, “this is nothing. You should see my Twitter replies.”

She knows what he’s looking at: threats to kill her, to rape her, to find any pets she owns and—

A muscle tics in Frank’s jaw. “This is…” He seems at a loss for words, his anger burning so hot it has rendered him silent. “Sick,” he finally says. “It’s fucking sick.”

“Yeah,” she says, and she’s more tired than anything else. “But it’s what every female journalist deals with.” She reaches out, takes the note from his hand and puts it back on the pile. “I don’t even read them anymore. I just take a photo and send it to the cops. They have a file. These I keep in case they need fingerprints or something.”

Frank looks down at his bare hands and curses. “Shit. Didn’t even realize. I mean—Homeland wiped my prints from the database, but I could’ve still fucked up evidence.” His gaze falls on the scraps of paper. Some are typed, some are handwritten.

“Were they all mailed?”

“Some of them,” she says. “Some are hand delivered, crammed under doors or slipped into our mail.” She understands what he is getting at. “And no, they don’t usually come with return addresses. People aren’t quite that stupid.” A pause. “Although the emailed threats usually are under their normal email—which is stupid, because you’d think they would at least create a dummy account.”

Frank nods. She can almost see him thinking, thoughts whirring. “Those can be tracked,” he says quietly, almost to himself.

“No,” says Karen sharply. “You are not getting your hacker friend to trace the IP addresses of everyone who has ever sent me a death threat, got it?”

She sweeps the notes away, shoving them into a pile so she can rest her arms on the table. Her robe is a deep silken crimson, flowing and comfortable in the warm summer heat. In the dark illumination of her apartment, the color is uncomfortably close to blood. “Everyone gets these notes,” she says. “Even Ellison gets them. He’s had to deal with people saying they would kidnap his kids, hurt his wife, all of it. It’s screwed up, but it happens. And we keep doing our job anyways.”

He doesn’t like it; she knows him well enough to see the tightness in his jaw, the dark glitter of his eyes. Since he moved in with her, Frank has done all he can to distance himself from the Punisher: he grew out his beard again, goes to work early, helps their elderly neighbor with her sticky lock, smiles at the single mother who lives down the hall, and always gives the neighborhood dogs a scratch behind the ears. She knows it’s half because he does want that kind of life and half because he doesn’t want Frank Castle’s enemies to find Pete Castiglione’s girlfriend. He expects threats to come from his end of things—not hers.

“Is it worth it?” he asks. “Even knowing what it could cost?”

She looks down at the scattering of notes. Then at the paper copy of the Bulletin still resting on her kitchen counter. “Yes,” she says. “The truth always is.”

He looks away. He doesn’t look happy, but nor does he look ready to argue with her. Then again, he killed and nearly died to find his own truths. And Frank Castle is many things, but a hypocrite isn’t one of them. “Fine,” he says. “But if any of these people come after you—if this goes beyond emails and letters and creepy phone calls—”

“I never said I got phone calls.”

“But you do, don’t you?”

She grimaces. “Sometimes.”

“If someone shows up in person, I reserve the right,” says Frank, “to take certain steps.”

“You are not going to—”

“Non-lethal,” says Frank. Then thinks about it. “At first.”

“Frank.” She covers his hand with hers. His hand turns over automatically, so his palm is against hers, thumb sweeping across her knuckles. Part of her wants to tell him no, that she doesn’t want him to take those kinds of steps again.

But the truth of the matter is, she won’t ever stop fighting for the truth.

And he’s never going to stop fighting to protect what he loves.

So she lets the subject drop.

As for the notes, she puts those in a box in her closet and tucks them away.


End file.
